Working Mom of Three, History Buff, Writer, World of Warcraft Addict. . .My Comments on My Crazy Life.

I regularly submit “Breakfast Topics” to Wow Insider. Sometime, they get published. Most of the time, they don’t. I was looking through some of my submissions and found this peice that I wrote back in October, when the excitment about Cataclysm was heating up. Anyone else have these kinds of fears leading up to the expansion?

New toys? For meee? I hope I don’t break them this time!”
The Cataclysm is coming. It’s official—the start date (or death date of the Old World, if you prefer) is December 7. We’re getting new races, new race/class combinations, revamped zones, new battlegrounds and instances, and new talent trees that will change the way we play our game. There is celebration throughout the land of Azeroth!
Okay, so every party has a pooper, and I guess I am the one.
I have two level 80’s that I play regularly: A Tankadin and a Mage. I have just started getting comfortable with my tanking role. I have mastered the 969 rotation and learned where to throw my Avenger’s Shield to get hate most effectively. I have built my Mage up to doing decent DPS in her Arcane spec and am finishing off my tier 9 gear set. (Just one more piece to get)
I was not chosen for the Beta, so I haven’t tried out the new “toys” firsthand. I can only go by the information I get from the community. What I have been reading and hearing from friends who are in the beta makes me nervous. It’s a completely new game, they say. My Mage’s Tier 9 Gear will be replaced by green quest rewards, therefore being obsolete. The portals in Dal and Shatt are gone, which means I‘ll have to fend off more whispers when I’m in the Auction House from people asking me to port them around!
My poor Paladin will be more manna dependent than she already is. Game play will be less about rotations and more about managing something called “Holy Power” to get the bigger hits. My Mage will have to worry about keeping full manna too—and take a bigger part in groups by using her Crowd Control abilities. Heck, I may have to dust off my Polymorph button and put it back on my toolbar! (I still think that every time I Polymorph a caster, some Warlock is going to drop Rain of Fire or Death Knight drop a Death and Decay square on the little guy’s head! In cases like that, I wish I could fire an Arcane Blast straight at the offender’s head!)
The unknown worries me. I am afraid that Cataclysm will bring such wide-sweeping changes to the basics game mechanics that I will have trouble relearning how to play my “girls,” especially the Pally. I may find out that tanking with her is just too complicated for me to master. I sincerely hope not, because my Pally is my “Main” and I have put the most time and effort into learning how to play her “well.” I’d hate to give her up, cast her aside as I did so many broken toys as a child.
But, then again, maybe I’ll find a new toy to love. Who knows what the Cataclysm will bring.